heart breaking note on first page: "This book was the property of William Turner Clarke, younger brother of Amanda T? Todd. He died at the age of nine years."

This was someone's book, a childs. These type of moral/ethics stories make up most of the children's books of this period. They are wonderful and fun to read, and would do well to come back into fashion even for today's young people, maybe.

The illustrations are typical type of that time and you can basically age the piece by the illustrations alone, they are so typical of the period.